Enjoy the baseball super-regionals this weekend, y’all! The SEC could account for half of the 8 College World Series teams in Omaha.

We’ll see if that actually happens, but at least 2 SEC squads will be heading to Omaha with a chance to win a national title.

For now, before the baseball begins, let’s dive into your questions for this week’s SDS Mailbag:

Tim:

Which school has the easiest proposed slate of 3 permanent SEC rivals and which school has the hardest?

Well, this is certainly a scenario where Mizzou could actually catch a break for once. According to my SDS colleague Matt Hayes, the Tigers would hypothetically be looking at Arkansas, Vanderbilt and Oklahoma as their 3 permanent rivals.

Go ahead and scroll down to the comments section after I say this, because Arkansas fans will certainly be upset, but Mizzou has owned that rivalry (also note how Arkansas fans will insist it isn’t actually a rivalry). Vanderbilt just doesn’t seem poised to compete at a real level in the SEC anytime soon.

And while Oklahoma is a historically great program, it is in a bit of a down time right now.

At the very least, that seems like a fair annual slate of rivals for a middle-of-the-road SEC program like Mizzou. Those would all be competitive games at this point.

As for the hardest slate of opponents, it certainly isn’t Alabama, despite what Nick Saban has said. Tennessee is on the rise, but a few short years ago, the program was a mess. Auburn is currently a mess. LSU was a dumpster fire for 2 years after winning the 2019 national championship before Brian Kelly righted the ship.

All of these programs go through highs and lows unless they have a legendary coach like Saban.

Thus, my answer for the hardest slate of 3 permanent rivals is Auburn. Yes, in Hayes’s model, the Tigers get to play Vanderbilt every year, but their other 2 rivals are Alabama and Georgia.

Ouch.

A current dynasty (Georgia) and potentially the only program that can stop it (Alabama). That would be a tough draw for Hugh Freeze’s Tigers every year.

Blake:

If you could only pick 1 QB from the 2024 College Football Hall of Fame class to be enshrined, who would it be?

Let’s start by naming the quarterbacks from the FBS ranks who are on the ballot this year:

  • Matt Cavanaugh, Pitt
  • Tim Couch, Kentucky
  • Ken Dorsey, Miami
  • Graham Harrell, Texas Tech
  • Josh Heupel, Oklahoma
  • Ryan Leaf, Washington State
  • Kellen Moore, Boise State
  • Antwaan Randle El, Indiana
  • Alex Smith, Utah
  • Michael Vick, Virginia Tech

If we’re talking national championships, Cavanaugh, Dorsey and Heupel are the only quarterbacks on that list to win it all.

But the Hall of Fame is all about individual achievement. To me, you don’t need to win it all to be an all-time great. Johnny Manziel was an incredible quarterback, even if he never came close to a national championship. Ditto Lamar Jackson, Andrew Luck, Matthew Stafford and any number of other guys.

My final 3 would be Dorsey, Heupel and Vick, but I’m going to give the nod to Vick here. He was one of the most exciting players of my lifetime. He was one of only a few successful left-handed quarterbacks, one of the best runners in the game and a guy who simply made plays.

Fortunately, more than 1 of those great quarterbacks will be able to make it into the 2024 class, so it’ll be exciting to see exactly how many of them are enshrined.

Matt:

Will we ever see the SEC (or the B1G or any other Power 5 conference) go to 10 conference games?

Absolutely.

The SEC and Big Ten are already basically professional leagues. I know there’s a lot of concern about how hard 12 games (or 15 if you make it to the championship game) are on players’ bodies, even if a couple of those games are against inferior competition.

But the NFL just added a 17th regular-season game. Why? More TV money. College football isn’t immune to that pressure.

Sure, the SEC and B1G are printing money now, but what happens when everyone wants more? Well, you need a better product to sell to TV partners. That means more high-level league games.

It won’t be anytime soon, but we’ll see 10-game schedules in the Power 5 conferences in our lifetimes, I firmly believe. Now they just have to get the SEC on board with the 9-game slate.

@Dobbe8:

Where would be the funniest place for Pac-12 games to be shown on TV or streaming in the future?

I’m sure there are funnier answers than mine, as I’m approaching my response with just a slight hint of realism.

If you want some joke responses, my Saturday Out West colleague Jon Gold had a lot of fun and provided some great answers in this piece.

I’m going to go with truTV as my answer, though. We already have to scramble to remember where to watch truTV every March when the network airs the First Four games of March Madness and also figures prominently into the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament.

It seems like the perfect place to stick some classic Pac-12 After Dark games every Saturday night. However, it would also be difficult to tell if it was an actual Pac-12 football game or just a rerun of an episode of “Impractical Jokers” some weeks.

Have a question for next week’s Mailbag? Tweet at us using #SDSMailbag or email me at Adam.Spencer@XLMedia.com.